JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Voters will get to decide on extending Duval County Schools’ 1-mill referendum, also known as a property tax, this November after a delay from the city council finance committee caused public outcry last week.

The Jacksonville City Council voted 15 to 0 after discharging Ordinance 2026-0387 from the finance committee onto the floor during Tuesday’s regular council meeting.

Many council members spoke in favor of giving voters a chance to decide on extending the property tax.

News4JAX spoke with Superintendent Dr. Christopher Bernier following the vote.

“Our teachers won a great victory tonight. I’m really proud of the City Council, very thankful for their questions last week,” he said. “I think they gave us an opportunity to clear up the message and the work tonight puts it on the ballot in November and now the people get to make a decision.”

The finance committee deferred the ordinance last week, which delayed the decision on whether voters would get to weigh in on extending the 1-mill property tax that first passed in 2022. The school board voted 6-1 in March to send the renewal to city council.

The measure needed council approval to appear on the November ballot.

Some council members previously pointed to the proposed statewide property tax cut from state lawmakers in Tallahassee as a reason for the delay. Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan addressed the holdup at a news conference Thursday, saying she did not believe the council has grounds to stall.

“The role of the council, in what I’ve been told, is to simply be in a ministerial and managerial role — just making that request happen,” Deegan said. “So I don’t think council has a role here beyond saying ‘this is what you want, we’ll put it on the ballot.’ I don’t really understand the debate.”

Duval County Schools says the 1-mill tax will generate about $121 million a year and will fund teacher and employee pay, arts programs, and athletics. It is not a tax increase — it would maintain the current rate. For a home valued at $300,000, the tax amounts to about $300 a year.

John Meeks, a teacher and first vice president of Duval Teachers United, said the delay put educators’ livelihoods in jeopardy.

“I think the only result of these delays could be the endangerment of our teachers’ well-being,” Meeks said. “There’s no increase. It’s just a keeping of the status quo, which has allowed our school system to have the A grade that it has today. I don’t think we can afford to go backwards.”

Tiffany Clark, a parent and advocate with Parents Who Lead, said the holdup pulled focus away from what matters.

“This is getting tied up in a way that it shouldn’t,” Clark said. “This is only about teachers and that’s it, and that is where the focus needs to be.”

Dr. Bernier encouraged voters to research the 1-mill before heading to the ballot box.

“I think our voters have to do their due diligence just like the City Council did. They have to dig into the issues, they have to understand how the money is being utilized and how aggressive we’ve been of being good fiduciary and good stewards of this money and that will allow them to make an informed decision,” he said.

Voters now have the final say on the renewal if the measure reaches the November ballot.

Just a few short weeks after completing a $58B merger with Coterra Energy earlier in May, Devon Energy received an offer of $8B for its shale assets in the Marcellus region of Pennsylvania. The offer, from money manager Stone Ridge Asset Management, covers about 190,000 net acres and could become the largest asset-backed securitization funding ever attempted in the United States oil and gas sector. (Source).

As noted in Business News Today, the Coterra merger gave Devon both assets and exposure across the Marcellus, Anadarko, Eagle Ford and Williston Basins, with the attendant risks and opportunities. Devon must now show that it can handle such varied assets, or else divest itself of those not related to its core business.

The Marcellus assets are expected to account for approximately twenty percent of Devon’s 1.6M barrels of oil equivalent (boe)/day production forecast in 2026. (Source). Part of the importance of the Stone Ridge offer is that it provides a clear price point for Devon’s Marcellus assets, and not a theoretical framework for discussion of value. While Devon DEO Clay Gaspar has indicated that Devon might divert some non-core positions, the company recently has been in an expansion mode. On May 20 it was the biggest buyer of oil and gas drilling rights on federal land in New Mexico and Texas at an auction held by the federal government. In fact, Devon was responsible for $2.5B out of the total $4B sale, a record for such auctions.

Regardless of whether Devon accepts the Stone Ridge offer, the fact of the offer itself shows the value of such wells in Pennsylvania. As of February 2026, the Keystone State has 281,000 wells which produce an average of 1,073,895 million cubic feet (mcf) per natural gas well. (Source). That makes Pennsylvania the second largest producer of natural gas in the United States, accounting for approximately 19% of the national total. (Source). This is an extraordinary statistic given that approximately twenty years ago Pennsylvania had almost no natural gas industry at all.

Pennsylvania’s natural gas reserves doubled from 2013 to 2023 and now reaches an estimate of 101 trillion cubic feel (Tcf). (Source). As the state uses only about one-quarter of the natural gas that it produces, Pennsylvania truly becomes the “keystone” for surrounding states in providing natural gas, especially to states north and east like New York, which has plentiful natural gas reserves but chooses not to develop them, or New Jersey which has limited reserves.

In addition, the Marcellus Basin assets have demonstrated low decline rates. As such there is talk that these assets might lend themselves to securitization of individual wells, which could be appealing to potential investors looking for an interest in energy assets. This is made possible by the lower depletion rates, making these assets attractive to investors over the longer term. (Source).

Likely then, Stone Ridge would partner with an operator to extract the natural gas while using its financing skill to develop, produce and sell an investment vehicle. If successful, this could help revolutionize the energy industry – at least in the Marcellus – and drive up even further the value of Marcellus assets.

However the Stone Ridge offer for Devon’s Marcellus assets shakes out, it could be that the big winner is Pennsylvania. Unlike New York, Pennsylvania welcomed the energy industry, and that industry may continue to make Pennsylvania a strong place to do business into the middle of the twenty-first century.

ROCKFORD, Ill. (WIFR) – Rockford’s finance and personnel committee decides to reject the lone bid for meal services to the city’s Head Start and Early Head Start program.

In a memo to the committee chair, city staff feel there was not enough bids and the only entity to submit one did not meet nutrition requirements. A new bidding process is expected to open soon.

“It’s a concern of us to make sure that we get the right qualified individuals that they know what they’re doing. So, we address the issues that HUD might have or any of that specific criteria that exists out there and the team is going to work to find someone,” 11th ward alderperson Jaime Salgado (D).